Co-op horror game “Phasmophobia” is a huge success

We've seen development progress on the game's patch last week, with dozens of bugs fixed or changes made, and even some new content for Halloween. As for what’s next, a glance at the game’s public development Trello board shows you how many features Dknighter is thinking of for the future, but one element is very unlikely to be added into the game. The PvP mode that allowed players to control ghosts, which was previously mentioned on the announcement board, is no longer featured on there.

"The second PvP mode was added to the Trello to see how people would react to it. Right now, I have no plans to add another game mode, as it would push the game in a completely different direction from what I want it to be. I want the game to remain 4 players vs. 1 AI, and balance the game, then add new features to this type of gameplay," the developer explained.

The idea is to make Phasmophobia better than it already is, with more potential scary content and ways to catalogue these ghosts. Most importantly, to make more  of this game that millions have taken to over the past few months. I asked Dknighter if he expected this game to be this popular so early on. He replied, "Not at all. My original plan was to have a server capacity of 500 players on launch day, and it is to drop off from there, and I was only aiming to make enough money to keep making more games. Now the game has over 2 million sales, with up to 90,000 people online at the same time.” If you want to know how popular the game is now, the number of concurrent players online has since risen to over 110,000.

How does Dknighter view his success, given that his first game has been met with an outpouring of praise? Is it because of the COVID-19 lockdown, or is it because gamers are becoming more open-minded to indie games? “I think everyone likes multiplayer games because you can play with your friends rather than against other players, whether the game comes from a well-known development team or not," he said. With the game's popularity and the changes that players have forced Kinetic Games to make, this theory is being tested again.